Week XXXVI

Ireland and England

I am back!
After 256 days of travelling the trip has come to ..let’s say a break. The last week I spent in Ireland and England. Most of the week, I stayed in the capital city Dublin. I guess I can’t really say I’ve been to Ireland since I only spent one day on the countryside, but that’s good for now. Dublin was like everyone expects: rainy but not really wet, cloudy but not really dark and chilly but not really cold. Nevertheless, I was back to Europe and it felt a bit depressing. Something that was quite easy to solve by visiting one of the many pubs – or more..

There will be photos as soon as I’ve solved my temporary living and Internet situation. For now, I have to say it feels awesome to eat dark bread – and, of course, to see my family and friends again.

Lots of plans await my realisation – or at least my tries to. Enthusiastic times – even though the weather gave me a hit on the head (including snowy things). Well, if all else fails, next stop: Mexico!

Week XX – XXI

Fiji – Nadi and Yasawa Islands

Walking barefoot through sand (and dead corals – ouch!), taking only cold showers (caused by the lack of hot water), a lot of fresh fruits like pawpaw (Papaya – more vitamin c than a couple of apples), pineapples and bananas, generator powered electricity that is sometimes down, snorkeling with reef sharks and manta rays – and cutting the feet on slippery paths. All that describes the island life quite well.
At first, it might seem as there is little to do in these small paradises, but there’s always more than just lying at the beach in the sun. Although, just relaxing in a most comfortable hammock with some ice cream and a bottle of water, a good book and the view below palm trees onto the sea is one of the most chilled out things I’ve ever done. So what else did I do? I learned card tricks, card games (I admit, most of them were drinking games), improved in kayaking, snorkeling, walking on almost anything barefoot, managed to read a book and to start a new one – come on, that’s a lot in two weeks. Further, I took part in social kava drinking, talking and making music with local people which is so much enjoyable and missing in most ‘modern’ cultures.

Chronological.. After arriving in Nadi, where I stayed two days to get used to the different environment, I booked a travel and accommodation pass and went on to the so called Yasawa island group in the West of the country. I stayed at Beachcomber island, went further up to Kuata, Korovou and the Coral View resort – in the northernmost part of the islands. Afterwards, I was heading down again with stops at Manta Ray Island and South Sea Island – the smallest, where it took about five minutes to walk around the island – at low-tide. Every island was quite different and since the meals are included in the accommodation (since there are no shops on the islands to buy stuff) and most of the resort offer some additional evening program like fire dances and local music, it is not that expensive as it may seem and well worth the value.

I’m back in Nadi and will do some stuff around here and most likely head over to the south of the mainland, the Coral Cost, for a few days before I’m going to leave Fiji and fly over to Hawaii in about a week. Take a look at the Yasawa Island life, sunsets and fire-dancing..

Week XIII

New Zealand – North of the North Island

Last week has been my last week in New Zealand so long. There are far too many other places I haven’t seen yet to just stay there. Not much happened in that week. I finally went up the sky tower. I also went diving one last time at the poor knights islands just before I left for Sydney. These islands are a marine reserve where no fishing is allowed which is awesome for the underwater life. I was able to see a few sting rays, moray eels, clown nudibranchs as well as a lot of other fish. I also walked a few hours through Whangarei where I stayed to see Kauri trees and its waterfalls but that’s about it.

The photos of the last week are added at the end of the last New Zealand album VI. Around poor knights islands from the boat and of the sailing boats..

Sydney gave me a wet welcome. I did two jumps, each almost perfect with self-timer and at the first try. Whangarei falls and a short preview of Sydney:

Week I

Japan – Narita, Tokyo

Forget everything you’ve heard – it’s all different anyway. Well, maybe not everything but a lot. Reality is like realising that the black box of an airplane isn’t black at all. Actually, I didn’t see one myself, but that’s what you learn when you’re caught in a plane – for eight hours.
So what about Japan? The people aren’t that small. Now, they are a bit smaller than average, which is enough that you might find stairs, toilet rooms and things that hang from temple ceilings a little small or low designed. In general you might say Tokyo is a bit into extremes. Many people are either running to get somewhere or knocked out and sleeping in their subway seats or in cars on the side of the street. What’s quite interesting is, even with the extreme fashion tendencies of the young generation it’s easy to stand out with blue jeans and a light gray and red winter jacket.

Winter is probably a good season to avoid masses of tourists. Still, now in January Japan seems a bit sad, missing it’s colours and cherry blossoms and that stuff – apart from the plastic thingies you can find everywhere.
Tokyo is big with a population of over 12 million. Nevertheless, it’s rather hard to get lost. There are city maps and subway stations at every other corner. The hard part is to find a specific place because of their building signing system. Also there are various subway and inner railway companies which makes route and cost estimations a little more difficult.
Anyway, Tokyo is a city built for many, many people. Small places to eat are everywhere. Small machines where you can buy pre tempered coffee and cold drinks ubiquitous. At every other corner there are police cabins and it generally seems like they found perfection for a full employment scheme. ‘Alright-and-attention-shouter’ for reversing commercial vehicles, ‘bicycle-closer-side-by-side-positioner’, ‘people-by-passing-waver’ at one-man construction sides.

What’s not to be missed:
- Asakusa temple and market; big shopping malls around Kanda

- Tokyo City Hall, and the view from the 45th floor

- Sumo, when you’re there around tournament time

- and, of course a lot of temples, shrines, parks, trees..

Next stop: Kyoto tomorrow morning.

How can you be sure

It may seem like an easy question. When do you know something? Is it at the end of the poker game where you win and might say ‘I told you so’, or when you make a turn and crash your car into another one thinking ‘I knew it’. That doesn’t sound so difficult, does it?
But what if your questions are ‘is this the work I want to do till I grow old’ or ‘is this girl worth rethinking one to 26 thousand decisions’? When can you trust someone with your problems? When can you do anything you like without feeling ashamed even the tiniest bit? When can you be 100 percent sure to call some place ‘home’?

The answer is: we can’t be sure, ever. Except maybe that instant of a second where our perception meets our expectation. But as soon as that happens there is no open question anymore. For the interesting answers that probably means that your life is about to end. Then you can finally say: that pizza in that small restaurant in 1999 was truly the best I’ve ever had.
So, how can we find our answers until then? What base shall we build our decisions onto? How to live a life without regrets?
I don’t know – nobody does (or else they’re lying)!
The only thing you can do is to learn to accept and to live with the decisions you once made!

Blue skies

It’s interesting: It’s not hard to do nothing, if you have to do something – but it’s quite hard to do something, if you got to do nothing at all. Anyway, again I started to write ..well, now it’s been 17 days ago. 17 days ago obviously the skies were full of blue stuff, called “not clouds”. Today, what can I say, it looks more like a milkshake up there. But one with blackberries.
Life is full of distractions or should we say: sometimes between all this things-you-have-to-do there are small breaks where you can be yourself? But wait – I wanted to write about blue skies. Maybe life is like these skies. They are cloudy quite often, but you can be sure up there everything is clear. When you blow away all these distractions everything that matters becomes visible. Blue. Dreams, wishes, targets in you life – everything is up there.

The thing is, we can’t do much about these clouds. They will be there if we like it or not. Though, what we shouldn’t forget is what lies beyond. Feel bad when you want to, loose focus when you have to, but be certain of yourself and the blue that’s right above you.
And just for the record: I know, it only looks blue from down here. But, like the postal service would say: “everything looks perfect from far away..”

Stillstand

Meistens sind wir einfach zu sehr mit uns selbst beschäftigt. Wir regen uns furchtbar über ein Schuhband auf das auf einer Seite zu kurz ist, ohne zu merken, dass wir damit dem andern den Hals abschnüren. Man lacht ja auch gerne über den andern. Denn lachen tut ja schliesslich nicht weh – sagt man. Wer denkt beim zwischenmenschlichen Miteinander schon an das Wohl des anderen? Was ist überhaupt dieses ‘Wohl’? Warum sollen wir uns auch auf etwas konzentrieren wovon wir nichts haben? Die, die jetzt mit Gott, Liebe und dergleichen kommen sollen bitte bei der nächsten Bücherei ganz vorne bei A beginnen und sich melden, wenn sie wissen wo Säuglinge nicht herkommen.

Leben ist Egoismus pur.

Ich könnt’ kotzen! ~ (derStandard-Artikel von Franzobel am 29.09.2008)

Nach der Wahl ist vor der Wahl. Haben wir denn überhaupt eine Wahl? Wenn wir so weiter machen haben wir zumindest bald keinen Wal mehr. Aber Wahlwitze sind momentan walscheinlich eh nicht mehr angebracht. Auf der anderen Seite geht es doch immer irgendwie weiter. Zumindest für irgendwen. Zum Beispiel für die Amerikaner. Die stehen noch immer vor der Wahl; und mit offenem Mund vor der Wal Straße. Vier Tage später quält man sich übrigens auch am andern Ende der Welt.